On July 1, Missouri S&T will begin its 17^th year as a playing member of the Great Lakes Valley Conference.  The S&T athletic program switched its affiliation to the GLVC from the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association in the summer of 2005 and that move has led to a number of memorable moments, new rivalries and numerous honors for Miner student-athletes in the ever-changing world of intercollegiate athletics.

Most people who follow athletics at Missouri S&T know of the school's affiliations with the GLVC and MIAA, but the athletic program has actually a deeper history of conference tie-ins that just those two leagues.

The MIAA was established in 1912 with 14 institutions within the state of Missouri including the five teacher colleges in Springfield (now Missouri State), Maryville (now Northwest Missouri State), Kirksville (now Truman State), Cape Girardeau (now Southeast Missouri State) and Warrensburg (now Central Missouri).

However, S&T – then known as the Missouri School of Mines – was not among those 14 schools.  It wasn't until 1919 when MSM became a member of the conference, as there had been a concern for years that due to MSM's association with the University of Missouri that it had an advantage over the other institutions and thus was denied admission to the league.

But in the spring of 1919, the MIAA schools voted 8-2 to admit the Miners into the conference and re-admitted Warrensburg, one of the original members, back into the fold.  Warrensburg had been booted out of the MIAA four years earlier due to charges of unsportsmanlike conduct and in a twist of irony, Ray Sermon – who was the MSM football coach in 1919 – was a player at Warrensburg and was at the center of the controversy that led to the school's ouster from the MIAA.

Five years after the Miners gained admission to the MIAA, the league went through another change just a few years later.  The change came as the result of a movement by the private institutions in the conference that opposed the financial assistance being provided to the public schools and those schools branched off to form the Missouri College Athletic Union starting in the 1924-25 school year.

MSM retained its affiliation with the schools in the MCAU and would stay with that group until 1935, at which time it rejoined the MIAA.  As stated by Harold Grant, the football coach of the Miners at the time, "Naturally, we think this is a good move because this way we at least we will have five big games on our schedules in all sports and we have been encountering a little trouble in finding suitable opponents that are strong enough."

The Miners and the five teacher colleges that made up the MIAA after S&T returned to the conference remained together as a six-team league through the 1969-70 academic year.  During that time, Miner teams had their most success in golf as they claimed 10 conference championships and in football with five MIAA titles, but also won MIAA titles in baseball in 1968, men's indoor track & field in 1948 and the league's inaugural men's cross country title in 1958.

In addition, the Miners were recognized as the outdoor track & field champions in 1943, but that conference meet was just a dual meet with Southeast Missouri State as most schools had their rosters depleted and budgets trimmed with World War II in progress.

The MIAA began to take a different look beginning in 1970 when Lincoln University was added to the conference, then 10 years later, the league went through a significant transformation in the span of just over a decade.  It began with the addition of the University of Missouri-St. Louis – the first non-football playing school to join – and the departure of Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State) a year later as it reclassified to NCAA Division I.

In 1986, the conference added Southwest Baptist University as its eighth member and then grew to 12 institutions three years later by adding Missouri Southern, Missouri Western and its first two schools from outside the state borders in Washburn and Pittsburg State from Kansas.  Southeast Missouri State withdrew from the MIAA in 1991 as it also moved to NCAA Division I and was replaced by another Kansas institution, Emporia State.

Two more moves within the league took place before the Miners made their own conference switch, as UMSL left to join the GLVC following the 1995-96 school year and Lincoln withdrew in 1999 to join the Heartland Conference.

On June 29, 2004, the GLVC invited Missouri S&T, along with Drury University and Rockhurst University, to join the other 11 institutions that were part of the conference at that time beginning with the 2005-06 school year.

"We have had a great association with the MIAA for many years, but this move will allow UMR to join a conference where its institutions share similar philosophies and also expand our visibility throughout a region that serves as our main recruiting base for students," said then S&T Chancellor Gary Thomas at the time of the decision.  "In addition, we anticipate this will allow us to reduce the amount of time required for our teams to travel to competitions."

While the more distant teams in the GLVC such as Northern Kentucky and Wisconsin-Parkside were farther away geographically than the ones in the MIAA, there were also more schools closer to Rolla as well.  Drury, located in Springfield, was coming into the conference with S&T and was able to begin a rivalry in the same tone that it held with Missouri State when they were in the MIAA together.

The change allowed the Miner program to be realigned with UMSL, who had left the MIAA for the GLVC less than a decade earlier and join a conference that included Southern Illinois Edwardsville, located right across the Mississippi River in the Metro East region of St. Louis.

The move did several things for the program.  One, as Thomas had mentioned, was that it aligned the university with "like institutions", as Missouri S&T's high academic standards fell in line with the other GLVC institutions, particular in a conference where most of the members are private schools.  It allowed the program to compete with schools that fell more into the footprint of the university's recruiting base, which would include the entire state of Missouri as well as large cities such as Chicago, Indianapolis, Louisville and Cincinnati.

Also, the move gave the men's soccer team a conference home; it had been without once since the 1998 season while the women's had been playing for a championship in the MIAA.  The university would have to add a women's volleyball program (a core sport in the GLVC) as part of the move and that began in 2007, but the football team was going to be left without a conference affiliation as the GLVC did not sponsor a championship as only S&T, Quincy, Saint Joseph's and Indianapolis were the only league schools with football programs at that time.

After two years as a football independent, the Miners would align with several Midwestern schools to form the Great Lakes Football Conference and would play there – winning two championships along the way – until additional league expansion and the addition of two affiliate members from Ohio, allowed the GLVC to begin sponsoring a football championship in 2012.

The Miner swimming program also went through a similar fate for a longer period of time, as the MIAA did sponsor a swimming championship from 1970 until the early 1980s before Missouri State left the conference and other schools began discontinuing their swimming programs to fall below the necessary threshold for a league championship. 

After the MIAA stopped holding a championship in that sport, the Miners went through a number of affiliations to hold a "conference championship," ranging from the Midwest Regional Championships to the New South Intercollegiate Swimming Championships and won 18 titles in those meets between 1982 and 2013 until the GLVC gained enough swimming programs to hold a championship meet of its own beginning in 2014.

In the time the MIAA expanded in 1970 until S&T's departure 35 years later, the Miners added three additional crowns in football – including an undefeated season in 1980, which was not accomplished again in the conference for nearly two decades -- as well as winning six MIAA championships in swimming, two in men's soccer and a pair in men's basketball; the Miners won both the regular season and tournament championships in the 1995-96 campaign.

It also added another baseball championship and a regular season women's basketball title to its mantle during the second half of its tenure in the MIAA.

Since moving into the GLVC prior to the 2005-06 season, the Miners have had their most success in terms of winning conference championships in men's track & field, where they have won five outdoor and two indoor championships.  S&T's baseball program has been among the top teams in the GLVC in the last decade, winning four divisional titles and reaching nine of the last 10 conference tournaments, while the volleyball team won the first of its three division championships in just its fifth year of existence in 2011 and the men's soccer team gained a share of the 2010 regular season title.

Even though it has yet to win a conference title, the swimming team has finished among the top teams at the GLVC Championships on an annual basis.

The women's basketball program, which had struggled through its final years in the MIAA, had a rejuvenation upon the switch as it made nine straight conference tournament appearances and also won a piece of the GLVC West Division championship in the 2010-11 season.  S&T's football team has also thrived as a GLVC member, going 41-22 in league play and becoming the first team in conference history to play in a post-season bowl game – which it won by beating MSU Moorhead 51-16 in the 2018 Mineral Water Bowl.

As of today, as the Miners prepare to embark on their 17^th season in the GLVC, all of the varsity sport programs are under the GLVC's championship umbrella.

Off the field, the S&T student-athletes have also been duly honored for their work in the classroom.  An average of 146 Miners per season have been named to the GLVC's All-Academic team for holding a grade point average of 3.3 or better during an academic year – S&T has averaged 193 over the past three seasons – while 114 student-athletes have received the Brother James Gaffney Distinguished Scholar Award in the last four years for finishing a year with a 4.0 grade point average.

In addition, 234 Miners since the 2009-10 academic year have earned the GLVC Council of Presidents Award for finishing their playing career with a 3.5 or better grade point average and 16 Miners have been named as GLVC Scholar-Athletes in their respective sports since the Miners joined the conference, including multiple-time selections Jordan Henry in men's track & field, Keith Sponsler in swimming and Deshawn Jones in football.

The Miners have also had five individuals – Henry, Sponsler, Jones, volleyball standout Jennifer Costello and men's soccer All-America selection Spencer Brinkmeyer – that have been selected as the winner of the GLVC's Richard F. Scharf Paragon Award as the top student-athletes in the conference, while Kate Hamera, an All-America performer in women's cross country and track & field, was the first recipient of the MIAA's Ken B. Jones Award for her accomplishments both on and off the field.